Customer Reviews:
A very informative book!.......2007-09-21
I guess everyone knows or has seen Dolly Parton perform. She knows how to take a lemon and make lemonade out of life's challenges. I highly recommend the reading of this book.
Hoping for a sequel, though.......2007-05-23
The best thing about Dolly Parton's autobio is 'hearing' her VOICE come through the print. Eternally optimistic and carefully eccentric, there's no doubt Parton has one of the most blithesome star qualities in the biz. And why not - it's her business to be so lovable.
While she hedges (considerably) on her 'indentured servitude' with Porter Waggoner and speaks infrequently about her creative process (writing and recording), when she gets a topic that pleases her - such as her childhood exploits - Parton lets go like one of her coolest numbers. Her humanism seems unbounded.
Since the publication of this book, Parton, confounding all reasonable expectations, returned to the studio with a revitalized muse, producing some of her most credible work (Grass Is Blue, and onward). Hopefully, we shall 'hear' Parton speak of her artistic reinvention in a future volume.
A laugh a page.......2007-03-05
I knew Dolly Parton had a good sense of humor but I didn't know it was as far out as it is. Although I've been a fan for a long time, I'm a "lazy" fan and didn't even realize she had an autobiography out there until recently. Just to think I could have been laughing 13 years ago. Duh! If you're feeling down and need a laugh, get this book. Dolly needs her own TV show and if the people who run Hollywood had good sense, she would have had it long ago. Of course, they don't so they would have probably put the wrong writers on it and it would have been cancelled in a week.
Dolly And Friends..........2005-08-05
Dolly had a hard life growing up in the wilds of East Tennessee; she started out poor and indeed did have a 'coat of many colors' as her children's book explained. She wore hand-me-downs in the backwoods of Sevier County where my paternal grandfather's people lived. She's funny. Coming from the country, it took some doing and lots of help to get where she is today. She has re-invented her personality through the years from the young lovesick girl who write 'I Will Always Love You' to Porter Wagoner. After all, she was a young country bumpkin from the Knoxville area, and we inexperienced girls fall hard for the first person we can admire. He gave her the first 'big' break, singing on his show in Nashville.
She had been on local talent shows in Knox County, Cas Walker's for country music. She migrated to Middle Tennessee to sing on the Grand Ole Opry where she met my friend, Hal Durham, who was manager of that fabulous old show on radio, television and live. I once attended at the Ryman and he gave Zachary and me a backstage tour.
In Nashville and in the movies, she had a good life but suffered some setbacks and depression. The two photo secitons show how little Dolly the girl was transformed into Dolly the bombshell blonde. She is the richest person in this area as she owns Dollywood, the major attraction for people from all the states who visit the Great Smoky Mountains and from other countries.
In her 'thanks' section, she included her favorite makeup, Revlon staff, and favorite lingerie shop, Frederick's of Hollywood. She includes Terry Morrow, local entertainment columnist for the News Sentinel daily Knoxville newspaper, and Ligiea Saveanu (whoever she is -- I was going to name my daughter Ligeia). From the Grand Ole Opry performers, she includes Archie Campbell from the famous Civil War area in EAst Tennessee, Bull's Gap, Grant Turner, and Bud Wendell, WSM announcer. Game show hosts were Bob Eubanks and Huell Howser; how could she leave out Wink Martindale and Pat Sajacks, both Tennesseans? For some reason, she included the Knoxville Democrat Party chairman, Jim Gray, Al Gore, Jim Sasser, and Sandra Fulton (wife of Dick Fulton of Nashville). Movie stars included Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda, and Delta Burke, while singers were Mac Davis, Billy Ray Syrus, Whitney Houtston and Reba McEntire. She has Johnny Carson, Eddie Hill, and many many others -- too many to mention.
Like most successful people, she has humility when it comes to feeling indebted to others for her success. She showed he CBS anchor a thing or two when he enterviewed her ans commented on her most obvious attraction. She has talent galore, and I wish Dolly could live forever. She will in the figure on Sevier County Courthouse Lawn, as a young country girl. Dolly is everything to everybody.
*****A Country Superstar!*****.......2005-06-08
Put simply, I LOVE this book! I've just finished reading it for the second time and it's even better than it was the first time.
I read it when it first came out in 1994 and was so jazzed to find it a few weeks ago in a used bookstore. I had a few other things to read before I picked up Dolly, but now that I have, I don't want it to end!
I can't say enough good and great and amazing things about this biography. She wrote it herself and it's honest, down to earth and funny as all get out. Because of it, I even added some more Dolly Parton CD's to my music collection and it was a very much needed trip down memory lane.
Thanks, Dolly, for such an amazing, revealing look at what makes you tick. Now, what I want to know is: when is your next book coming out. :)
Book Description
This engaging collection of stories is an intimate look at Dolly Parton's family, told by her oldest sister, Willadeene. Rare family photos included.
Customer Reviews:
Such A Talented Family of Singers........2005-08-05
Dolly had a hard life growing up in the wilds of East Tennessee; she started out poor and indeed did have a 'coat of many colors' as her children's book explained.She was born at home like me. She wore hand-me-downs in the backwoods of Sevier County where my paternal grandfather's people lived. She's funny. Coming from the country, it took some doing and lots of help to get where she is today. She has re-invented her personality through the years from the young lovesick girl who write 'I Will Always Love You' to Porter Wagoner. He gave her the first 'big' break, singing on his show in Nashville.
Dolly had been on local talent shows in Knox County, Cas Walker's for country music. She migrated to Middle Tennessee to sing on the Grand Ole Opry where she met my friend, Hal Durham, who was manager of that fabulous old show on radio, television and live. I once attended at the Ryman and he gave Zachary and me a backstage tour.
In Nashville and in the movies, she had a good life but suffered some setbacks and depression. The two photo secitons show how little Dolly the girl was transformed into Dolly the bombshell blonde. She is the richest person in this area as she owns Dollywood, the major attraction for people from all the states who visit the Great Smoky Mountains and from other countries.
In her 'thanks' section, she included her favorite makeup, Revlon staff, and favorite lingerie shop, Frederick's of Hollywood. She includes Terry Morrow, local entertainment columnist for the News Sentinel daily Knoxville newspaper, and Ligiea Saveanu (whoever she is -- I was going to name my daughter Ligeia). From the Grand Ole Opry, she includes Archie Campbell from the famous Civil War area in East Tennessee, Bull's Gap, Grant Turner, and Bud Wendell, WSM announcer. Game show hosts were Bob Eubanks and Huell Howser; how could she leave out Wink Martindale and Pat Sajacks, both Tennesseans? For some reason, she included the Knoxville Democrat Party chairman, Jim Gray, Al Gore, Jim Sasser, and Sandra Fulton (wife of Dick Fulton of Nashville).
Movie stars included Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda, and Delta Burke, while singers were Mac Davis, Billy Ray Syrus, Whitney Houtston and Reba McEntire. She has Johnny Carson, Eddie Hill, and many many others -- too many to mention.
Like most successful people, she has humility when it comes to feeling indebted to others for her success. She has talent galore, and I wish Dolly could live forever. She will -- in the figure on Sevier County Courthouse Lawn, as a young country girl. Dolly is everything to everybody.
One of the best Writers I have ever come in contact with!!.......2002-02-14
Willadeene Parton is a very wonderful and great writer. She is not only sucessful at writing about her family but she is a great poet and cook as well. Her cook books are Awesome if you are into some great southern cooking. I have ate some of her meals in her cook book prepared by none other than herself, I used to be her Personal Assistant, and let me tell you, she cooks better than anyone I know. The Books are a great Pleasure to read and the cook books are just as much fun. Not just coming from a Friend but form a True Fan. ....
The tales of a unique family come to life in an amusing book.......1999-04-28
Originally, this book was released as "In the Shadow of a Song" in 1986. I read it then, and I read it again and enjoyed it as much as a second helping of grits and gravy and country ham. Brandon B., Tampa, FL
I loved it........1998-02-27
I have read this book front to back three times!! I was born in Appalachia and have lived in the hills and hollows of East Tennessee all my life. I related to the deep family roots, and loving atmosphere their family had growing up. Willadeene captured not only their family spirit but, the pain, laughter, and triumphs of the Appalahcian people.
Great job on your book, Willadeen. I love you!.......1997-09-08
Great reading . This is a very special book about a very special family. I promise you'll love it
Amazon.com
She was lovely, sophisticated, and famous for her witty conversation, even in a social circle that was known for its fabulous talkers. The only child of Oscar Wilde's dissipated older brother Willie, Dolly Wilde (1895-1941) led a life as scandalous and glittering as her uncle's: she, too, loved her own sex, and her longest romantic relationship was with American heiress Natalie Clifford Barney, who was host of the most important Parisian literary salon of the 20th century. Unfortunately for Dolly's posthumous reputation, she "was an artist of the spoken word" whose only written legacy was her marvelous correspondence. Quoting liberally and perceptively from those letters, American playwright Joan Schenkar brings Wilde to life in a modernist biography that is written in prose as sparkling as Dolly's fabled bons mots. Schenkar eschews conventional chronology to consider Wilde's life thematically, from her lesbianism to her taste for smart society to her self-destructive identification with Uncle Oscar. She reminds us just how remarkable and accomplished were the women at Barney's salon (journalist Janet Flanner, novelist Djuna Barnes, and artist Mina Loy, among them) and how much they esteemed Dolly Wilde. Yet, her biographer downplays neither Wilde's addiction to drugs nor the sad loneliness of her death (possibly from a drug overdose) at age 45. This is essentially a tale of "squandered gifts and lost opportunities," Schenkar acknowledges, but she successfully provokes readers to share her admiration for Wilde's prodigal generosity with both her talent and her affections. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
For sixty years she was a delicious rumor: Oscar Wilde's enchanting niece Dorothy. Born a scant three months after her uncle's notorious arrest and raised in the shadow of the greatest scandal of the turn of the 20th Century, Dorothy Ierne Wilde died exactly as she lived: vividly, rather violently, and at a very good address.
A "born writer" who never completed the creative life promised by her famous name and gorgeous imagination, Dolly Wilde was charged with charm, brilliantly witty, changeable as refracting light, and loaded with sexual allure. She made her career in the salonsand in the bedroomsof some of London's and Paris' most interesting women and men. Attracting people of taste and talent wherever she went, she drenched her prodigious talents in liquids and chemicals, burnt up her opportunities in flamboyant affairs, and created continuous sensations by the ways in which she seemed to be re-living the life of her infamous uncle.
In this revolutionary and very modern biography, Joan Schenkar provides a fascinating look at what it means to live with the talents but not the achievements of biography's usual subjects: those obliterating "winners"like Dolly's uncle Oscarwhose stories have almost erased riveting histories like Dolly's own. And she uncovers never-before-published evidence of the hidden life of the Wilde family and of the extraordinary salon society of Natalie Clifford Barney, Dolly Wilde's longest and most fatal attachment.
"At last, an in-depth portrait of the 'Beautiful Loser of the Wilde family,' a brilliant eccentric whom Janet Flanner rightly described as 'like a character out of a book.' Anyone interested in modernism, gender-bending and/or expatriate Paris will be enthralled by Joan Schenkar's penetrating and often poignant biography of a woman strangely charismatic and witty enough to be 'truly Wilde.'" Sandra M. Gilbert, co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic and No Man's Land
"Truly Wilde is a revelation, the great story of a life and of the creation of modern culture. Read this biography for its high drama, its hijinks, and, at the end, for its poignancy and horror." Catharine R. Stimpson, author and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University
"Joan Schenkar has lifted a veil to reveal a sophisticated, overheated lesbian world in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. At the center is Oscar Wilde's niece Dollyself-destructive, self-dramatizing, magnetic. This is a great story, beautifully told." Edmund White
"A touching portrait of a louche, lush and lascivious lady who makes today's alleged It Girls look like the vapid paper-dolls they areand a vivid picture of a time when, incredibly, the wealthy and titled were also witty and talented." Julie Burchill, columnist for The Guardian
Customer Reviews:
meaning without words...a wisp of a shadow.......2004-07-02
How do you relate the life of someone who never stepped forward from the shadows of her disgraced uncle, Oscar Wilde? Someone who sparkled like a thousand shards of a broken mirror on a sunlit day?
Dolly was a wisp of a shadow, mesmerizing, bewitching permanently etching herself into onto one's memory with her mere presence. Those who knew her well, Janet Flanner, Natalie Barney, Honey Harris - true wordsmiths all- struggled to explain her enigmatic aura. Captivating, enchanting - adjectives repeated over and over in a vain attempt to eplain her effect on all she met.
Her magic was her brilliant conversation, her charming turn of phrase, the impermanence of flowing dialogue that she wouldn't or couldn't commit to paper. She lived and died in 'The Moment' nothing else mattered. Her flame burned bright and then was gone - a willing(?) or fated victim to excesses she could not (and would not) control and the ravages of a body aged long before its time. Suicide? accident? Murder? The myth and truth of 'Wilde' consumed her all the same.
This biography isn't linear because Dolly didn't live her life linearly. Her life was moments of sight and sound and fury that the author captures completely.
How do you truly explain the unexplainable? This book is at it's best a series of half glimpses, whispered hints, or even dim reflections in mirrors (Dolly hated mirrors)of someone so busy 'living in the moment' that after that glorious moment she was gone with only the faint trace of pleasure and grace.
And somehow all that works and works well, this book recreates her life so much more then a dry recording of droning facts could ever capture of such a glorious spirit. No such dullness For Dolly Wilde! I highly recommend this book.
Truly Milde.......2004-05-28
In the spirit of Schenkar's grasping at straws to add pages to her book, I'd like to provide a recipe of my own:
How to Bore and Infuriate a Reader
Take 1 very interesting character
Add vast amounts of filler and repetition
Lard with half-baked postmodern theory
Heap in generous amounts of self-satisfaction
Infer that you've egregiously taken advantage of Nathalie Barney's elderly and generous housekeeper
Stir it all up with bad prose.
Half-bake and serve forth to an unsuspecting audience.
A wildly brilliant biography.......2003-01-29
With "Truly Wilde," author Joan Schenkar has reinterpreted and redefined the possibilities of the biographical form. Her strategy in recreating the world of Parisian intellectual and artistic salons in which Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly flourished in the 1920s - most notably Natalie Barney's Academie des Femmes - is stunningly iconoclastic, deeply compelling, and brilliantly written. From a base of scrupulous and capacious research, from interviews with primary sources and access to original documents, illustrated with a fascinating array of photographs, Schenkar uses a thematic rather than chronological approach to bring Dolly Wilde and her world to life, and to follow with fierce attention the course of her descent to a lonely death in London at the age of 45. Ms. Schenkar does not feel bound by academic niceties. Her book is rich in the odd detail - a palm reading, for instance, or a favorite recipe - that make that era and those brilliant characters as luminous as real life. In her hands, Dolly Wilde becomes a memorable and ultimately mysterious force of nature.
For The Intelligent Reader.......2003-01-20
There is nothing like pleasure to motivate a book review and I took an enormous pleasure in reading -- and then in instantly re-reading - TRULY WILDE. This book gives such a precise and poetic view of the seductive and fascinating Dolly Wilde and such a generously ducumented look at the period in which she flourished -- a period in which conversation was still an art and identity was something that could still be invented - that you really feel yourself feeling with and for Dolly. It's an exemplary, inventive biography. And the photographs are wonderful.
Truly Wilde assumes that its readers delight in language and ideas and bring to it a certain intelligence. I presume that this refreshing approach accounts for the stellar reviews on the book jacket by such brilliant writers as Jeannette Winterson and Edmund White; I presume that it also accounts for the few, suspiciously vitriolic comments found on this site - which seem to be motivated by something other than a desire to share an opinion.
I HIGHLY recommend TRULY WILDE to all lovers of pleasure who like to think: this book, this life will reward you a thousand times over.
A disaster.......2003-01-13
This is without a doubt the worst book I have ever read. The author's cohorts seem to have agreed upon "experimental" as the operative descriptor for this abomination. In these tedious pages, however, "experimental" means only this: bad research, no facts, meandering/aimless prose, lack of direction, and disorganization. Oh, yes, how could I forget? It also means enormous amounts of filler at the end, including recipes and a handprint analysis-all, no doubt, in an attempt to meet contractual obligations to the publisher for a page count.
Don't take my word for it. Read the New York Times book review that appeared when this book was first published. It was written by a well-known lesbian feminist, and one would expect the reviewer to be sympathetic. Instead, she ripped this book to shreds. Deservedly so, in my opinion.
Average customer rating:
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Harriet Hosmer American Sculptor, 1830-1908
Dolly Sherwood
Manufacturer: University of Missouri Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Sculpture
| Arts & Photography
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General
| Arts & Photography
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Women in Art
| History & Criticism
| Arts & Photography
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Artists, Architects & Photographers
| Arts & Literature
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ASIN: 0826207669 |
Book Description
America's foremost true-crime writer offers her most riveting real-life drama ever: a heartbreaking story of treachery, jealousy and murder.
Jenn Corbin appeared to have it all: two dear little boys, a posh home in one of the upscale suburbs of Atlanta, expensive cars, a plush houseboat, and a husband -- Dr. Bart Corbin, a successful dentist -- who was tall, handsome, and brilliant.
But gradually their seemingly idyllic life together began to crumble. Bart was distraught and Jenn seemed disenchanted. Then, just a few weeks before Christmas 2004, Jenn was found dead with a bullet in her head, an apparent suicide. But Gwinnett County detective Marcus Head was not totally convinced, nor was Jenn's family. Was this death related to another apparent suicide fourteen years earlier of a beautiful student who once dated Bart Corbin in dental school? Or was the answer to be found in a secret -- even dangerous -- relationship Jenn Corbin was having outside her marriage?
For Too Late to Say Goodbye, Ann Rule has interviewed virtually everyone related to the story to uncover the truth behind the headlines of these two sensational deaths. What emerges is an incredible tale of jealous rage that runs from the steamy to the macabre. The definitive unraveling of one of the strangest murder investigations of our time, Too Late to Say Goodbye is perhaps the finest achievement of a truly great writer's career.
Customer Reviews:
Ann Rule has done it again!.......2007-10-17
Ann Rule has produced her usual very well researched, well documented and thorough summation of lives vicously cut short. I own all of her books and have read every one. I wait anxiously for each new one to come out. She is enormously knowledgable and compasionate. I have never been disappointed by her writings, and Too Late to Say Goodbye is no exception!
LAF
Too Late to Say Goodbye.......2007-10-01
Ann Rule has authored over 28 books and has been called the Queen of True Crime stories. I've read several of her books, and, while this is not her best, it is very well-written and tells an interesting story. Bart Corbin, a dentist, was charged with murdering two women fourteen years apart. One was his girlfriend and the other his wife, and both women were attempting to extricate themselves from their relationships with him. He was extremely possessive and had a bad temper, though he claimed that both women had committed suicide and had staged the death scenes to appear that way. He probably would have gotten away with the first murder if he hadn't committed the second. Anyone who likes true crime stories will like this book.
Best Author-Best Books.......2007-09-17
I have read every Ann Rule Book there is. She never dissapoints you. She writes a true and real sense of what happen without being gory or disrespectful to the victims. This book was I think one of her best books and I feel deeply for the familys of the victim. You will come away feeling as if you know the family.
Riveting and compelling.......2007-09-17
Ann Rule is simply the best true-crime writer around, not only because of her writing style but also because of her meticulous research into the lives of the psychopaths and narcissists who commit the crimes and their victims. She makes us understand not only how and why the crimes occurred but also why the victims became involved with the murderers and why they stayed for them until it was too late (very few of her books deal with stranger-to-stranger murders; most involve intimate partners).
Here, the young wife of an Atlanta-area dentist is found shot dead in her bed, an apparent suicide...until it's discovered that one of the dentist's girlfriends had also died in almost exactly the same way. That death had been ruled a suicide - but the unbelievable coincidence ( a man loses two of the women in his life to self-inflicted gunshot wounds?) led to the first case being reopened.
A compelling page-turner.
Not as good as some of her books.......2007-09-17
I have read almost all of Ann Rule's books and I am a huge fan. I have to say I was disappointed in this one tho. I was very surprised to see many grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors and discrepancies in dates and places. I wonder if she didn't have a proof reader??? Still, I did enjoy it, but wish I had waited for the paperback.
Customer Reviews:
"Good".......2003-06-19
This book has great pictures and some interesting information. Recommended for any Dolly fan!
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The Delectable Dollies: The Dolly Sisters, Icons of the Jazz Age
Gary Chapman
Manufacturer: Sutton Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Entertainers
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General
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Jazz
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ASIN: 0750943955 |
Book Description
Icons of the Jazz Age, the delectable dancing Dollies were stars of cafe society. The rags to riches story of twins Jenny and Rosie is set against the glittering backdrop of pre-war high society in America and Europe. But behind the glamour of fame, fortune, mistaken identity, millionaires and sisterly devotion lurked rivalry, duplicity and tragedy. A dizzying cocktail of delight.
Average customer rating:
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Dolly Madison: First Lady (Spirit of American Our People)
Cynthia Fitterer Klingel , and
Robert B. Noyed
Manufacturer: Child's World
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
United States
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U. S. Presidents & First Ladies
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| Ages 9-12
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ASIN: 156766170X |
Book Description
Briefly describes the life of First Lady Dolley Madison, including her accomplishments and her impact on American history.
Books:
- Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression
- Dr. Fisher's Life on the Ark: Green Alligators, Bushman, and Other "Hare-Raising" Tales from America's Most Popular Zoo and Around the World
- Ethical Theory and Business, Seventh Edition
- First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)
- Five against One
- Four Inches
- Frida's Fiestas: Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo
- Go Long!: My Journey Beyond the Game and the Fame
- Greta Garbo: A Life Apart
- Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- History: Fiction or Science
- WALT DISNEY IMAGINEERING: A BEHIND-THE-DREAMS LOOK AT MAKING THE MAGIC REAL
- Start with a Digital Camera
- Staying Dry: A Practical Guide to Bladder Control
- The Camera
- Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles' Water Supply in the Owens Valley
- The Simple Guide to Fresh Water Aquariums
- One Small Place by the Sea
- Royal Russia: The Private Albums of the Russian Imperial Family
- Crisp: Office Management, Revised Edition: A Productivity and Effectiveness Guide
Smoky Mountain Memories: Stories from the Hearts of the Parton Family
Coat of Many Colors
STILL WOMAN ENOUGH: A MEMOIR
Dolly Parton - Live and Well
Reba: My Story
